Sydney, Jan. 10 : Yugoslavian tennis star Ana Ivanovic has said that when she comes on court, her Scorpio instincts take over, and she becomes extremely competitive.

According to the Sydney Morning Herald, 21-year-old Ivanovic, who is otherwise beautiful and good natured, besides being UNICEF''S national ambassador to Serbia, is extremely intense when on a tennis court.

"I think when I''m on the court I become with a killer instinct, a real Scorpio . When I''m very motivated and when I have to compete I change a little bit, I become very competitive," the paper quoted her, as saying.

Is the intense focus puzzling for her?

According to Ivanovic: "It''s very different."

She told the Herald in Brisbane this week: "Everything is new for me. After the French Open, I felt like there was more media attention and that''s something I have learnt now to deal with."

"I''m learning to enjoy it, actually. When someone recognises you or wants an interview you think, ''You know, maybe I''ve done something good, maybe I have a good result''. So, if you see it in that way, it becomes a lot easier and you realise that actually you''re there and you''ve succeeded because of the media, because if it wasn''t for them no one in the world would know us," she says.

She is adamant the person and the competitor are two very different beasts.

Last summer she released those Scorpio''s impulses and, with Australian conditioning coach Scott Byrnes close by, reached the final of the Australian Open, which she lost to Maria Sharapova. A little more than four months later she defeated Dinara Safina to clinch the French title.

Yet, in the difficult months that followed that grand slam win and her rise to the top ranking on the Sony Ericsson WTA Tour, Ivanovic can look back now and see that she was perhaps too motivated, too single-minded.

After Paris, the power ground-stroker won just 11 of her next 20 matches and one small title (in Linz, in October), while dipping to her present slot at No. 5. As the top seed at Wimbledon she survived a scare in the second round only to lose to 133rd-ranked Jie Zheng in the third.

She admits now she felt flat, listless and emotionally drained. Two months later, her upset loss to French qualifier Julie Coin at the US Open was the biggest grand slam upset in years.

By then, though, Ivanovic was injured but unwisely trying to play through a thumb cyst problem that was initially misdiagnosed.

"I was very unfortunate with injury and I found it actually very hard to deal with it, because it was the first time I was away from tennis; for just over a month I couldn''t practise at all and then with just a few days'' practice I decided to play the US Open because it was still one of the biggest tournaments," she said.

"So it was very hard and some losses were very tough, a tough learning experience, but I learnt it''s also important to accept your losses, learn from them and move on .

"I learnt a lot about myself on and off the court, because once I was injured I was still 24 hours a day thinking about tennis - ''What shall I do? Shall I improve something or can I practise today?'' - and it was just very overwhelming for me and I found it very hard to deal with, because I''m a very emotional person as well . it was kind of draining me."

Then, when Ivanovic resumed, she was horrified to discover that all she wanted was to get away. Her solution was to try to relax - to still practise at full throttle, but then escape to a movie or shopping expedition, anything "just have your mind off tennis.

Now Ivanovic is herself again: the sunny eldest child of a Belgrade businessman (Miroslav) and lawyer (Dragana) who has added an eight million dollar home on the Spanish resort island of Majorca to her principal base in Basel and the family residence in Belgrade. (ANI)